When Little Smoot was 3, we decided for some bizarre reason that she was old enough to appreciate the Magic and Wonder of Disney World, so we hopped in the car and headed for Orlando. Little Smoot was a good girl in the car, which probably lulled us into thinking that the trip was going to go really well. This was before we encountered the Disney Toilets of Doom.
We met up with some people we had met on a cruise a year or so prior to this trip, and we all headed to Disney. I should mention that Little Smoot had just kicked the diaper habit a couple months before this trip, so public toilets were still a pretty new and unusual experience.
It didn't take us long before nature called at the park, and Little Smoot had her first experience with one of the wonderful Disney toilets. In an effort to be magical and wondrous, virtually all of the toilets at Disney have motion sensors, which would be a great thing in theory. You see, in theory, the toilets know when you have finished your business, and they'll flush everything into a wondrous magical land somewhere.
But in reality, what happens is that every time you wiggle your butt in the least bit, the toilet thinks you're finished and it decides to flush, and it doesn't care that you're still sitting there. And if you're a 3-year-old, a gigantic eruption of wooshing water right underneath your butt can definitely be a bit traumatic! So Little Smoot completely freaked out and cried her eyeballs out thanks to the Scary Toilet of Doom.
In a seriously-flawed attempt to be helpful, one of our friends we were traveling with suggested to her, "It's okay, Sweetie! Mickey Mouse is in those toilets, and he flushes them for people!" In theory, this seemed like an innocent remark, but in reality, now she was not only freaked out by the toilets, but now she was scared to death of Mickey Mouse. Super.
The rest of the trip was basically a nightmare as she refused to go to any public restroom. On the drive home, she displayed the most remarkable ability to "hold it" that I've ever personally witnessed. We literally drove from Sarasota, FL, to midway through South Carolina before she attempted (and then refused) to use a bathroom. Her eyes were turning yellow, for heaven's sake.
And for the rest of the trip, it was obvious that she had to go to the bathroom, so I'd stop at every single rest area so that she could go into the bathroom and freak out, telling us, "What if Mickey Mouse is in there!?!?!" I could undoubtedly write a book called "The Restrooms of I-95," because I saw all of them. I did finally get her to pee in the woods behind the restrooms at a stop in Virginia.
When we finally got home and vowed never to go to Disney World again, I wrote a snotty letter to Disney to suggest that maybe, just maybe, their toilets could be a little more kid-friendly since perhaps we weren't the only people in the world who thought Disney would be a good destination for kids. They responded a few weeks later, and as some sort of ironic apology, they sent us an autographed picture of Mickey Mouse. I would have framed it and put it in Little Smoot's room, but I really didn't want to have to put her in therapy at such a young age.
Fast forward to this week, where this motion sensor toilet phenomenon happened to me on two occasions at two different public restrooms. I have to admit that I peeked around to see if Mickey was lurking around in there somewhere.
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